The Mermaid

I find myself thinking about "The Mermaid"--not to be confused with the Disney movie of a similar title--but the actual Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. When I was younger, my grandparents gave me a book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales, and I read it cover to cover many times. But my two favorites were "The Mermaid" and "The Wild Swans."

It's funny. We expect fairy tales to be perfectly happy, generally a love story that "works out in the end." But they're not. Not always, anyway. Do you want to know what happens in the real (a.k.a. not Disney) version of the story? It's a lot deeper than you might expect:

"If men are not drowned," asked the little mermaid, "do they live for ever, do they not die as we do down here in the sea?"

Yes," said the old lady, "they have to die too, and their life time is even shorter than ours. We may live here for three hundred years, but when we cease to exist, we become mere foam on the water and do not have so much as a grave among our dear ones. We have no immortal souls, we have no future life, we are just like the green sea-weed, which, once cut down, can never revive again! Men, on the other hand, have a soul which lives for ever, lives after the body has become dust; it rises through the clear air, up to the shining stars! Just as we rise from the water to see the land of mortals, so they rise up to unknown beautiful regions which we shall never see."

"Why have we no immortal souls?" asked the little mermaid sadly. "I would give all my three hundred years to be a human being for one day, and afterwards to have a share in the heavenly kingdom."

[The grandmother discourages her, and the little mermaid asks if there is any way for a mermaid to gain an eternal soul.]

"No," said the grandmother, "only if a human being so loved you, that you were more to him than father or mother, if all his thoughts and all his love were so centred in you that he would let the priest join your hands and would vow to be faithful to you here, and to all eternity; then your body would become infused with his soul. Thus and only thus, could you gain a share in the felicity of mankind."

Well, as we all know, the little mermaid traded away her voice for a set of legs--but there is more. If the prince does not fall in love with her and marry her, on the morning after his wedding, the little mermaid will die and immediately turn to sea foam. She risks so much for the sake of an eternal soul! And alas, the poor little mermaid does not succeed. She saves her prince from drowning, and he cherishes her and considers her dearer to him than all others...except the girl he ends up marrying. On the eve of his wedding, the little mermaid's sisters rise to the surface with a deal. They hold out a dagger to her, and they tell her that if she plunges it into his heart while he is sleeping, his blood will fall on her legs, they will turn back into a tail, and she will be able to join her family in the deep waters to finish out her three hundred years of life.

The little mermaid drew aside the purple curtain from the tent and looked at the beautiful bride asleep with her head on the prince's breast; she bent over him and kissed his fair brow, looked at the sky where the dawn was spreading fast; looked at the sharp knife, and again fixed her eyes on the prince who, in his dream called his bride by name, yes! she alone was in his thoughts!--For a moment the knife quivered in her grasp, then she threw it far out among the waves now rosy in the morning light and where it fell the water bubbled up like drops of blood.

Once more she looked at the prince, with her eyes already dimmed by death, then dashed overboard and fell, her body dissolving into foam.

Yet this is not the end. Somehow, rather than becoming sea foam, she is welcomed among the daughters of the air:

"To the daughters of the air!" answered the others, "a mermaid has no undying soul, and can never gain one without winning the love of a human being. Her eternal life must depend upon an unknown power [italics mine]. Nor have the daughters of the air an everlasting soul, but by their own good deeds they may create one for themselves. . . . When, for three hundred years, we have laboured to do all the good in our power we gain an undying soul and take a part in the everlasting joys of mankind. You, poor little mermaid, have with your whole heart struggled for the same thing as we have struggled for. You have suffered and endured, raised yourself to the spirit world of the air; and now, by your good deeds you may, in the course of three hundred years, work out for yourself an undying soul."

Then the little mermaid lifted her transparent arms towards God's sun, and for the first time shed tears.

On board ship all was again life and bustle, she saw the prince with his lovely bride searching for her, they looked sadly at the bubbling foam, as if they knew that she had thrown herself into the waves. Unseen she kissed the bride on her brow, smiled at the prince and rose aloft with the other spirits of the air to the rosy clouds which sailed above.

"In three hundred years we shall thus float into Paradise."

"We might reach it sooner," whispered one.

I'm not going to make a theological statement, although it is obvious that the author is making one. And I'm not going to comment on his statement. My point is this: We have here a painfully beautiful story illustrating that selfish love is not love at all. It is her ability to truly love the prince--in letting go--that saves her. It is only in the little mermaid's relinquishing of her personal longing that she is given the chance to attain eternal life--which, by the way, is what she was really longing for all along.

Now I may admittedly be a (closet) hopeless romantic, but I'll tell you this. The real fairy tale makes a whole lot better story than the movie, don't you think? Shame on Disney for watering it down to nothing.